My maid had undressed me and I was in bed, pleased to be alone, the distant chatter from below a lullaby soothing me to sleep, when my maid knocked upon the door.
‘I’m sorry, Miss Tully,’ she said, ‘there is gentleman here wanting to see you. He’s very persistent.’
I told her to send the Duke of H away, for I was in no doubt as to who was pursuing me. ‘Ask him to return tomorrow,’ I said.
Hardly had I spoken when he pushed into my chamber and flung himself upon my bed. ‘Why make me wait when I already adore you and have such longings that cannot be satisfied by your hand or eye?’
‘Come now, sir,’ I said, ‘waiting surely adds to the delight of what is in store.’
‘But I cannot wait, you have stirred the fire in me and I’m ablaze with a want of you.’
‘Your flattery, sir, will not change my mind. Now, please, leave me in peace.’
My maid was still standing in the doorway, regarding the situation with interest. ‘What shall I do?’ she asked.
‘Leave us,’ said his grace.
‘Please, sir, less haste, I beg of you!’ I said, for the duke had already undone his breeches.
I could see quite clearly that there was no cooling of his ardour.
My maid returned, carrying champagne and glasses. ‘With the compliments of Mrs Gibbs,’ she said, and left again.
I smiled. I was forgiven, and more than Queenie’s ornaments were back in place. The duke took my smile for encouragement.
‘I am most sincere in my feelings, most sincere indeed,’ said the Duke of H. ‘I will be the tenderest of lovers.’
One look at him made me doubt that.
‘I prostrate myself at your feet,’ he said, his hand finding its way to my breasts. Then, hoping for no more resistance, he started to kiss my neck. ‘Can you not tell I am in love?’
I doubted that too, for what he said had little sincerity to it.
He kissed me upon the lips with such force that his tongue near choked me. When at last he pulled away I was gasping for breath.
‘Why such false modesty?’ he said. ‘Come, you are no blushing virgin.’
And before the inconvenience of any more words passed my lips, he kissed me again. I struggled to free myself.
‘Your grace, please,’ I said. ‘Not tonight.’
‘Yes, tonight it must be… it has to be… it will be… for tomorrow all could be ashes.’
A truer word he had not spoken, for no spark of desire ignited in me.
He stood up, abruptly, and took off the remainder of his clothes. I say took off, more he tore at them and revealed a prodigiously large weapon, the like of which I had not seen except on a donkey. It quite terrified me. I could only suppose that it must have previously remained half hidden and one touch had by no means allowed me to become fully acquainted with its size.
‘Sir, will you not first have a drink?’
‘No, no,’ he said, hoarsely, and lay down beside me. ‘This is the only nectar I need.’ He slipped his hands between my legs.
‘Sir,’ I said, ‘I would like to take a glass even if you will not.’
‘This is torture,’ he said, standing up again and going to the table.
He poured a glass of champagne. His pole stuck out alarmingly, but at least I had a chance to appraise him. He had a not altogether displeasing figure; he was well made in the quarters that mattered – perhaps too well made, for I was not certain that he would fit me at all.
He handed me a glass, I took a sip and that was all.
‘I cannot wait any longer,’ he said.
His weapon was fully loaded and desperately in need of being fired. He bunched up my shift over my thighs so that my Venus mound was well within his aim. There was little finesse in his manner. Having given me all that he felt was necessary to warm me to his desires, he thrust his point home far too soon, which immediately had the effect of cooling all passion on my part for he was not a good fit. Yet having once achieved the passage he cared little as to the pain given in the wielding of such an inappropriate weapon as his. I felt it tear through me and, all too soon, he released himself of his pent-up desire. He was not content with that. I had been used to Lord Barbeau whose strength in lovemaking had been much diminished by illness. This was, alas, not the case with the Duke of H and it was only in the light of a weary dawn that he did at last cease his assault on me and leave.
That morning, Queenie arrived with a tray of chocolate, full of smiles and fuss, to tell me that I had been greatly admired last night. Our wrangling forgotten, she was full of praise for my ingenuity at having captured the duke so quickly. I sighed. For the first time, I knew what being a whore meant, and I was disgusted with myself.
I never liked him, he never suited me. I tolerated him, that was all. It was his smell that I couldn’t stand. He was a fussy man in everything pertaining to personal matters but it was the odour he released when aroused – sweet, sickly – that, by degrees, I came to loathe.
In the beginning I told myself that the old ache would return but it never did. When you love without love, you lose all joy. This was work that owed nothing to pleasure. Never once, when I was with him, did I melt away in ecstasy or find myself in that most extraordinary part of my being where all of me and all of my lover were one.
He paid handsomely for my services. My duties were listed: I was to be an adoring mistress, to be available for him at all times. I was to be immaculately turned out. I was forbidden from reading novels, which he stated were the ruination of women. If I became with child he would pay for me to have it abroad but would not recognise it as his. I was to have no other gallants while I was with him. This contract could be terminated by him at any time without obligation.
I never thought about being with child, or that it might be the natural consequence of these unnatural games. Yet in that I was very lucky, unlike Bethany, who shortly after winning the bet found she was pregnant with her third child.
Up to then I’d had no idea she had a child at all, let alone two. One, a boy, was farmed out to a family in Kent and Bethany paid for his upkeep. The daughter she’d had by a Mr Fable, he had adopted, as his wife was unable to bear children. The price Bethany paid was her agreement never to see or contact her daughter. This time she would go to the country and come back once the baby had been weaned and found a home.
‘I have beautiful babies,’ she said.
The fairy house felt empty without her. Mercy was hardly ever there in those days; Hope told me that she’d rented chambers with Mofty and no longer had any interest in the game.
For the next three months I spent most of my days with Hope and my nights with the duke, while he pushed and shoved, pulled and gasped his way ever forward to the climax of his desire which always came a thrust too early.
Part of the agreement was that I had a carriage and four-in-hand for my sole use. Hope, and sometimes Queenie, would accompany me shopping or to the dressmaker’s. I had a good eye, and, enjoying being ahead of the beau monde, I took to designing my gowns. I found that I could occupy myself for hours with nothing more than the frivolity of trimmings. How fluffy and foolish my mind became. My clothes and fashions were often the subject of the gossip columns, my fame all the greater through my reputation of having a mysterious pearl hand. By small degrees I became used to such indulgence, though not, alas, to the gentleman who paid for it.
Lord Barbeau had told me that salmon garner strength by swimming upriver. It is hard to imagine what good comes of being so excessively spoiled and not wanting for anything. To counterbalance the boredom that was an inevitable outcome of this way of life, I fed my mind with the buying and reading of the forbidden novels and, when I wasn’t at the duke’s beck and call or concerning myself with frippery, I spent my time lost in other people’s imaginings.
I had confided in Hope that I had found myself pretending satisfaction with his grace when there was none.
‘We all do,’ said Hope.
He had no interest in me other than my body. Some conversation might have been enough to bring on some fondness for him, but there was none. He once told me it was better for a man to be in the wilderness than with a woman who had opinions and whose tongue was never still in the saying of them. He considered that a man was held in greater esteem if he had a beautiful woman at his side and delighted in the envious looks of his friends when we were together.
I find it hard to put flesh on the bones of such an engraving of a man as was the Duke of H. He appeared to me as nothing more than a plucked goose, all flesh and no feathers worth a mention. A caricature of ambition with little intellect to recommend him, he might as well have been drawn by the great Hogarth himself.
I knew that I meant no more to him than any other of his possessions, all of which he owned so that he might be shown in a favourable light. In the past my spirits would have risen on this hot air of folly, but they didn’t, and I began to feel more and more like my parrot: dead, stuffed and still.